Climate change could lead to sea level rises that are larger, and happen more rapidly, than previously thought, according to a trio of new studies that reflect mounting concerns about the stability of polar ice.
In one case, the research suggests that previous high end projections for sea level rise by the year 2100 - a little over three feet - could be too low, substituting numbers as high as six feet at the extreme if the world continues to burn large volumes of fossil fuels throughout the century.
"We have the potential to have much more sea level rise under high emissions scenarios," said Alexander Nauels, a researcher at the University of Melbourne in Australia who led one of the three studies. His work, co-authored with researchers at institutions in Austria, Switzerland and Germany, was published Thursday in Environmental Research Letters.
The results comprise both novel scientific observations - based on high resolution seafloor imaging techniques that give a new window on past sea level events - and new modeling techniques based on a better understanding of Antarctic ice.
The observational results, from Texas and Antarctica, examine a similar time period - the close of the last Ice Age a little over 10,000 years ago, when seas are believed to have risen very rapidly at times, as northern hemisphere ice sheets collapsed.